Posted on 01/24/2005 4:50:41 AM PST by Cornpone
A stone wall engraved with the names of 76,000 Jews who were deported from France to Nazi death camps during World War II has been unveiled in Paris. The "Wall of Names" memorial is located at the entrance to the French capital's newly renovated Holocaust museum.
Some 11,000 of those deported from 1942 to 1944 were children. Nearly all were killed - mostly at Auschwitz in Poland.
French President Jacques Chirac will officially open the site on Tuesday, before flying to Auschwitz.
Mr Chirac will be one of many world leaders present at ceremonies to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp.
'Prayer to the dead'
More than 2,000 Holocaust survivors and relatives of victims attended the inauguration ceremony in Paris' central Marais district.
They also took part in reading out a prayer to the dead.
The new site is an expansion of two institutions - the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr and the Centre for Contemporary Jewish Documentation.
"[The Memorial] will help in teaching a story that continues to haunt our everyday life," said its president Eric de Rothschild.
It took two years for several researchers to compile the list, drawing on Nazi secret police records and also Jewish archives.
"This wall keeps our innermost secrets in its stone and delivers them to those who pass," said France's former Health Minister Simone Veil, herself an Auschwitz survivor.
When the memorial officially opens on Tuesday, visitors will also be able to visit the basement crypt where ashes of some of the death camps' victims are kept.
Two weeks. I'd bet a paycheck on it.
Yeah, but that probably won't make the news...wouldn't be good for the EuroReich image.
Funny how the French and German *SCUM* call us brutal, war criminals, waging illegal wars, etc, when they either slaughtered or turned a blind eye to the slaughter of millions of innocents.
I've seen a memorial in Paris. There's a modest one already on the Seine.
It's probably the same one. I had a chance to go to Paris while I was living in Europe last year but I thought I'd wait and go when we return to liberate it again. Its so much more fun when the GIs are there:)
No it isn't
Calling French and German people scum should be beneath true Americans, disagree with their foreign policy YES but call the people on the street scum? what are things coming to.......
well said, comments like that make my blood boil
And there are small memorials in almost every town and city. But this one will be the first to have so many names on it (and yet, so few when compared to the number of the victims, whether they were Jews, Resistants, Tzigans, or "unpatriotic" Germans).
Thanks. I must say, though, that I share the anger of many Americans with the circus that was French diplomacy during the Iraqi crisis. I'd be happy to see Dominique de Villepin rolled into tar and feathers and booted out of the country.
The new FM said he hoped we had "finally got over the anti-American madness that afflicted the French diplomacy since 2003", and by Jove I sure hope he's right. We owe it to our dead soldiers who shared the same fate fighting the same enemy.
Hi Atlantic are you French?
Well said we are in agreement there it seems
This is simply not true, France was occupied and while what you may say could apply to the Vichy government. This in no way is the truth when refering to the Free French. Understand the differences as this offends those that where NOT part of the Vichy French puppet regime.
The only benefactor of a divided US and Europe are the terrorists
The anti-American madness has not been since 2003. If my personal experience is any guide, the misguided diplomacy resulted from pre-existing anti-American madness.
When we travelled around France in Oct/Nov 2002 it was the first time we encountered UNSOLICITED insults about America. Paris was the exception... I don't believe we encountered one single political comment in our two weeks there. But out in the countryside, it was different. People went out of their way to come over and tell us they didn't like our president or our policies. This happened on the street, in restaurants, and elsewhere when people heard my Americanized French. Without exception, they started out saying something like, "I see you're Americans...you don't like your president, do you?". When we said yes, we did, they proceeded to recoil in horror, as if we were drooling idiots. We learned to simply say he makes us feel safe and try to end the conversation. In all but one instance that worked...the one instance being the woman who followed us down the street yelling that America was going to get the whole world blown up.
Now, keep in mind, this was BEFORE the invasion of Iraq. It was before France undercut the U.S. resolution at the Security Council. It was before the "Weasels" headline in a prominent U.S. newspaper. It was only 14 months after 9/11.
We were thoroughly stunned at the open hostility. We were left wondering what the U.S. had ever done to merit such condescention. Many here have mentioned the U.S. contribution to freeing France in WWII. But we also provided the main defense against Soviet aggression duing the 40 years of the Cold War...while millions of Frenchmen marched and demonstrated against our presence.
Can you help us understand the "Anti American madness"? Perhaps we can get some dialogue started in this poor forum and start to mend some of the damage.
the result of media hype not real fact, the whole thing is a mess and i blame media in both countries as well as poor choices made in France's diplomatic conduct..
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